MuddyHorse Farm and Tech

Return to the Land of Unhappy Zombies

pforhan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:37:50 +0000

Memorial day weekend, we broke the ban on Wal-mart. Why, you might ask? Because of Nibbler.

Java Build Systems, Part 2: Maven

pforhan — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:39:21 +0000

Continuing the Java build systems discussion, today I want to focus on Maven, what it does well and what it does that frustrates. We’ll get a little taste of the minimum expectations for a new build system as well. Note: this page may be subject to edits, as I come across more pros & cons of Maven.

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Maven + OSGi + Spring + JavaFX (+Ant)

pforhan — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:46:50 +0000

We had to go through a number of steps to support the combination of Maven + OSGi + Spring + JavaFX-1.1 in our Swing-based application. This document describes all the steps and technology we’ve gone through to get it working.

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Java Build Systems, Part 1: What they do

pforhan — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:10:08 +0000

Two recent posts on the java-weblog circuit spurred me to motion:

Maven Adoption Curve (Alex Miller, coworker at MetaMatrix)
Maven and Ivy (Ryan Senior, coworker at BJC)

I was trying to think of the ideal build system. I won’t pretend that I’m going to get there in this post. Instead, I’ll enumerate what we do every day and what we need from a build system so as to start thinking about the ideal system.

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What’s new is old again…

pforhan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:18:21 +0000

Note: This post is probably wildly uninformed. Welcome to weblogs, everybody!

Then: Bush was reviled and derided for telling people to “Go shopping” after 9/11/2001.
Now: Americans are ruining the economy by saving their money!

Then: Americans don’t save enough.
Now: Americans are ruining the economy by saving their money! (OK, that was mostly a dupe, but still…)

Then: John McCain called for the TARP money to be used to buy up the bad mortgages. He was called an idiot, that was a stupid thing to do.
Now: Let’s make a Bad Bank to buy up all the bad assets!

Anyone? I’m not saying that the “thens” or the people who said them were right, I’m just saying that there’s a bunch of idiots running the country.

Good Luck, Mr. President

pforhan — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 12:46:21 +0000

I just want to wish incoming President Obama all the best. He has made a lot of noise about changing the way things are done, and I hope he can stick to that.

Along those lines, he has made a lot of announcements that, frankly, haven stolen the thunder of my 2012 campaign, like a bipartisan cabinet and lobbyist restrictions. And I will be truly grateful when he brings me my internet.

Last minute…

pforhan — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:21:19 +0000

Just to get a post in Dec 2008, I’ll drop a quick post here. That means I’m doing regular updates, right?

I have some draft game reviews sitting around, I’ll get to them soon.

Have a good 2009!

Game Review: Portal / Orange Box

pforhan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:56:57 +0000

My wife found a cheap copy of the Orange Box, from Valve. It actually contains 3 full games (Half-life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal) and two large expansions for HL2 (ep. 1 & 2) — a lot of content.

There was only one reason I wanted the game: Portal. I heard from friends and reviews about the thing, so I had a feeling I’d like it. I did. Great writing and mind-bending (but not too mind-bending) make for a fun game.

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Game Review: Mass Effect

pforhan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:53:03 +0000

It was brought to my attention that I forgot a game review of Portal, so I thought I’d lump several games in today that I’ve been meaning to review but haven’t yet. This is in order of me getting each game, starting with last Christmas.

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Linked to LinkedIn

pforhan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:19:12 +0000

This is a silly, pointless blog post to see how LinkedIn deals with blog posts.

Loose lips sink… gaming?

pforhan — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:15:29 +0000

One less secret I have to keep: see Riot Games to Summon ‘League of Legends’ in 2009 – MarketWatch. That’s for anyone who is curious about what my friend Scott has been up to and/or the game I interviewed to work on.

I can’t believe I missed the press releases, but such is life.

The main community site is at http://www.leagueoflegends.com/

I wish them the best. The game is fun and has a lot of teamwork potential.

Game Review: Too Human

pforhan — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:06:55 +0000

Too Human is an action RPG for the XBox 360. Sillicon Knights developed the title on-and-off for almost ten years. The game combines features from several other well-known action RPGs. To sum it up in a sentence, Too Human combines the frantic gameplay and hordes of enemies from the Diablo series with the weapon stylings and combos of Sega’s Phantasy Star Online.

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Lost the Plot

pforhan — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:53:34 +0000

This post is sparked by the recent SlashDot article: How Close Were US Presidential Elections?. And the recent presidential and vice-presidential debates. And listening to folks in general. Just some observations regarding political beliefs and behavior: people don’t listen to one another, people talk past one another, people ignore that which doesn’t fit their world-view.

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It’s all in my head

pforhan — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:37:12 +0000

I frequently say lots of very strange things that seem unrelated to the conversation at hand. That’s because I’m running a quite detailed conversation in my head at the same time. I’ll try different comments and responses, and evaluate the expected responses based on relevancy and humor.

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Wit: A Programmer’s Best Tool

pforhan — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:27:27 +0000

I was humbled this past week. I went to an interview at a game company. But I didn’t have my most valuable asset.

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Internet 1, Pat 0

pforhan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:51:10 +0000

Of course, the $170/month internet doesn’t work. Turns out, Verizon claimed near 100% V-Cast (EVDO Rev.A) coverage of Sainte Genevieve county. They’re lying. While we were able to get a signal, we could never acquire a digital signal.

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Backported entries…

pforhan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 20:07:45 +0000

I just imported a bunch of my posts from theconans.com so as to preserve them here. Some of them are nice, like favorite sci-fi books. Scroll back a bit and check it out.

Never underestimate the bandwidth…

pforhan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:48:15 +0000

I’m so excited. UPS says my Internet will arrive in a truck on Monday. It’s already at Nashville!

The title, of course, is a reference to that oft-heard saying, probably by Dennis Ritchie.

Thought for the day: 2008-08-06

pforhan — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 12:55:06 +0000

My daughter asked me last night:

Daddy, what if the whole world was clay except for chain saws?

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Lots of photos available…

pforhan — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:08:59 +0000

I finally got the bulk of our photos tagged and uploaded to Muddyhorse Photos. Enjoy! Note: the tag plugin for Gallery is a bit rough, but that’s what we have for now.